A roman a clef by Amy Sohn about the love life of Tom Cruise and his marriage to Katie Holmes is
billed as “a big, juicy literary novel” by its publisher, Simon & Schuster.

What
literary is supposed to mean, though, is unclear.

Slow? Artistic? Rife with allusions to Henry James?

A blurb on the back cover wishfully claims that the book is “like Henry James crossbred with the
very best of
Us Weekly.”

It’s true that a few James references have been Hollywood-ized for Sohn’s dubious purposes. But
only one of them works: when the ambitious title character of this startlingly bigoted book makes a
nasty crack about James’ homosexuality.

“Is that the way you think of gay men?” she asks her husband, who is pejoratively linked to the
word
gay on virtually every page. “You won’t get very far in this industry.”

Sohn has written before about unhappy marriages (Prospect Park West,
Motherland). So perhaps she took the Tom Cruise-Katie Holmes union to be the ultimate
example of a mismatch and a good way to write about someplace other than the Brooklyn borough of
New York.

In any case,
The Actress clumsily tells the story of 20-something Maddy Freed, who turns up at Sundance
(called Mile’s End Film Festival) with an indie film she made with her boyfriend, Dan.

Something about Maddy’s fresh new talent and tall, mannish frame catch the eye of Steven Weller,
who sounds just like Cruise with a few Clooney and Travolta traits grafted onto him; and Bridget
Ostrow, his longtime minder/hand-holder. They’re looking for new talent — and not just the acting
type.

“The man is so gay,” somebody says on the first page, as the drumbeat begins.

He is also blamed for being too good-looking, too shallow and not as talented as Dan. But,
because Maddy is young enough to have had a crush on Steven forever (as Holmes did with Cruise),
turning Dan into toast is a cinch.

The book blames Steven for everything and Maddy for nothing — not even for being blinded by the
perks and fame that come her way after he starts squiring her to public events.

She can’t tell whether she’s high on Steven or celebrity, and the book forgives her many
instances of idiocy about her new status. Sohn does a decent job of transcribing Cruise’s style of
seduction, so it’s not hard to see what snows Maddy. He doesn’t quite say, “You complete me,” but
the book uses a version of that phrase.

Anyway, Maddy is happily agog when Steven whisks her off to his
palazzo in Venice, Italy. One magical night, he picks her up and carries her a la Rhett
Butler up the grand marble staircase “without a grunt.”

There’s a lot of steamy sex between these two, which leaves no reason for Maddy not to be
blissfully happy for a while. Still, she continues to think “gay” and have suspicions about his
true nature.

The Actress isn’t enough fun to get by on covert references alone. Yes, there’s “a
beautiful Spanish actress with a Jessica Rabbit figure and a thick accent,” just like Cruise’s
ex-girlfriend Penelope Cruz. Yes, Steven and Maddy make a sexually explicit film for a reclusive
director who did his most awe-inspiring work decades ago and who, like Stanley Kubrick with
Eyes Wide Shut, summons them to England. (Of course, Cruise did this with wife Nicole
Kidman, but his life has been put into a blender for Sohn’s dramatic purposes.)

If there’s anything universal about
The Actress, it’s an overriding pessimism about how all marriages eventually turn sour.
Not stardom, secrets or sexual orientation has much to do with that.